The clouds bearing the storm known as conference realignment have finally arrived. Very soon, apparently, the richest and most powerful of all college athletic conferences, the ACC, will announce its expansion, triggering the definition of college sports for decades. Other leagues wait for the ACC, which chooses first in a football realignment, due ironically to the great value of its basketball package, and then they will make their moves among available teams as the weakest of all conferences, the Big East, is dismembered and the luckiest of its teams find homes in stable and surviving leagues while the unluckiest find themselves realigned out of major college sports for what will be at least decades.

Make no mistake, the coming moves are every bit as profound as previous shifts and constitute the logical conclusion of what started over twenty years ago with the partitioning of Division I into I-A and I-AA sub-classes and, a decade later, of the separation of I-A into BCS and non-BCS groupings, effectively eliminating the �nons� from the chance at the financial resources necessary to compete at the highest levels. The membership is being pared down again, and the losers, likely to be a handful of BE teams, will find themselves, for all practical purposes, out of the big time. The implications for Virginia Tech are enormous. A decade after missing the first BCS cut, East Carolina went from having the best of the five D-IA football teams in North Carolina to having the worst. The same would happen to Tech in our state, with the fall being much further due to what we have accomplished.

It is hard to overstate the negative consequences that will occur should Tech not make the cut. The first casualty will be our football program, as the loss of access to BCS bowls and television will cripple recruiting, making it impossible for Tech to continue to attract the caliber of player that has fueled our rise into national prominence. There will be no more Sugar bowls, or even Gator, only opportunities for the lower-level ones that survive in an increasingly tougher financial environment. The loss to Tech of the money that comes with being part of the BCS would quickly cause a drastic reduction in our athletic budget, breaking up the coaching staff that could no longer be afforded. It would accelerate as diminishing Lane Stadium crowds no longer would finance the remaining debt of the SEZ, which would soon sit empty game after game, and then would spread throughout the entire Athletic Department, causing reductions in salaries, scholarships and whole programs.

The University as a whole would suffer as well. The spike in admissions provided by the desire by prospective students to be a part of the football excitement, which has allowed Tech to become much more selective in who it admits, would end along with that football excitement. The overall pride in Tech felt by alumni at the prowess of the football program would recede, and along with it the tremendous increases in general fundraising from which Tech has leveraged football success. VT President Dr. Charles Steger�s goal of becoming a top research university would end. There would be no other comprehensive land-grant universities of the stature of Tech not participating in a BCS conference, which would eventually have a damaging effect on that stature.

These are consequences that are entirely too grim to contemplate, and simply cannot be allowed to happen. Tech is at a critical point, facing a severe challenge to its very existence as a major university. A reasonable question from those of us who love Virginia Tech would seem to be: what, exactly, is our Athletic Director doing to prevent this from happening?

The silence from Tech�s Athletic Director -- today's Roanoke Times article not withstanding -- during all of the conference expansion talk has been deafening. This would indicate that he is not being proactive in his attempts to land us in a stable major conference. There have been indications that he has been somewhat proactive, such as making moves since the moment he was hired to make Virginia Tech more attractive to other conferences. These proactive actions include making Tech�s Athletic Department financially solvent, funding a national program to provide visibility, making substantial facility improvements and generally aligning Tech�s department with those of the ACC and other conferences, but is that it? You call that being proactive? Since Tech has not realigned itself to another conference before conference realignment begins, it is obvious that Tech is facing a proactivity gap that must be addressed. During these vitally important times to Tech�s future, the university�s motto should change from �Ut Prosim� to �Proactivity Now!�

There are a number of things the Athletic Director could do to become more proactive. The presidents of the current ACC member universities will have the final say on expansion, at the recommendation of their athletic directors. Our Athletic Director, while he has indeed been on the phone presenting Tech�s case to other ADs, should bypass middle management and go directly to the decision makers at the top. It is time to become proactive. The Athletic Director should call President Mote of Maryland and inform him that Tech wishes to join the ACC. When the conversation is concluded immediately call again and repeat it, then again and again. After a week or so of continuous calls eight or nine hours a day, the message should be gotten across. The next week do the same with President Wayne Clough of Georgia Tech, and so on. Proactivity Now!

I am not sure what university presidents do during those portions of their days not spent contemplating additions to their athletic conferences, but it is hardly as important as Tech�s admission to the ACC, so the Athletic Director should get on the road to present our case. He should go to Durham to meet with Duke President Nan Keohane, and even if she is in a meeting with the head of Duke�s medical school, he should barge in and explain to her that Tech wants in the ACC. He can then head over to Chapel Hill. If UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser is in a meeting with state legislators concerning his budget, interrupt it and demand that Tech be admitted to the ACC. Go to Clemson and if President James Baker is in a meeting with wealthy IPTAY donors behind locked doors, find an outside window and beat on it until noticed, then tell him he should vote for Tech. Other Athletic Department personnel can be employed for this purpose. Send Sharon Mccloskey to Raleigh and have her stake out the women�s rest rooms at NC State. When Chancellor Marye Anne Fox enters, have Sharon pop over the partition from an adjacent stall and campaign for Tech�s membership in the ACC. Proactivity Now!

Tech has done an outstanding job over the last few years of aligning itself academically with current ACC members. However, the NOVA Graduate Center, the Roanoke biomed project, the Vet School cooperation with Maryland and the joint ventures with Wake Forest in engineering and medicine are all in geographical areas covered by existing membership. It is time to become proactive. Virginia Tech should merge with Rutgers and go under the new name �Virginia Tech-Rutgers.� Since the designation �Rutgers� is now synonymous with three centuries of gridiron futility, the chief reason the ACC is ignoring them, it will be necessary to drop the latter portion of the name. North Carolina has successfully eliminated the �Chapel Hill� hyphenated addition to their name for athletic purposes, and so can Tech.

Imagine the excitement that would be generated in New York City when #2 Virginia Tech hosts #1 Miami in Giants Stadium, with Gameday broadcasting from the ESPNZone in Manhattan. The Rutgers 1000 would be clamoring not to drop football but for tickets. The ACC is big into cross-marketing, and Tech in the New York-New Jersey area would offer a number of exciting new opportunities, such as having the Hokie Bird replace Furrio as Tony�s chief enforcer on �The Sopranos.� It would also cut the legs out from under Syracuse and their argument of being able to deliver the entire New York market except for anyone who will watch college football on television. Proactivity Now!�

It is said that Virginia Tech cannot offer the ACC anything it does not already possess with the Hoos, except for consistently solid football, a huge, rabid and knowledgeable fan base, including tens of thousands who will travel to bowls and opposing stadiums, the ability to sell out a football championship in Charlotte and hold on to the conference bowl bids that Syracuse would lose. It is time to become proactive. We marveled this past season as a Stealth bomber, piloted by a Hokie, flew over Lane Stadium, but after the flyover the plane simply returned to base. It should continue on to Hooville and bomb Scott Stadium flat. We have seen what a Stealth can do in Iraq, and the air defenses around Hooville should be inferior to those that didn�t protect Baghdad and as bad as the Hoo ground defense was in Lane last November. If any bleeding hearts are concerned about collateral damage the stadium can be bombed at halftime when it is empty. This would make Tech the only Division I-A team in Virginia, at least the only one with a place to play, and necessitate trading the Hoos for Tech. John Swofford would certainly get an enthusiastic response to such a proposal from the ACC�s Southern Tier. Proactivity Now!

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